A conventional SPDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format) receiver uses a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to synchronously sample data to recover the data from a serial stream and simultaneously produces a clock that matches the frequency of the incoming data stream. Other conventional systems recover data from various input data streams, such as bursty data streams, that also generate a clock that matches the frequency of the incoming data stream. Such conventional techniques include PLL failure mechanisms relating to jitter.